P4

P4

Contribution to the Team

September 2018

My original role was Games Designer, this meant I had to make the designs for characters, backgrounds and other game objects. So I started looking up ideas for our game. Such as concept art for characters, and pixel backgrounds. I also looked at 3 other games for examples, Metroid, Samus Returns, Pokemon Black & White and Shovel Knight: Spectre of Torment.

After looking at some of these other games, and showing them to my group, we decided we wanted the game to be 2D and to be pixel art. Here are some inspirations and ideas we found and made for the game. I used photoshop to make the character and clouds

October 2018

We liked the mountains and different skies. Our first idea was game like geometry dash. However, as we looked into how to change it, we decided to make the character fly instead of run along the floor. We thought about how we liked the mountain designs and sky and clouds and thought we could have a bird as the main character. We then looked into games like flappy bird. I wrote up all the ideas we had on P1 of our shared blog: http://unit65ktsh.blogspot.com/p/p1.html.

 

Once we had some ideas for different games, we made a Moscow (Must Haves, Should Haves, Would Haves and Could Haves) list to get an idea of what the game should include and which idea would fit into it the best.

Today we started making treatment for our game. We decided to go with a game called Enter The Nest. It started off using the ideas we had for our first game idea. We decided we would have a bird as the main character that the player plays as. I made a Trello worksheet which is a website that allows us to plan what we're going to do next, and who should carry out what role.

Harry, our director asked us to fill in parts of the treatment, as follows:

A) Game Synopsis And Mechanics - Myself
B) Functionality - Keiran
C) Target Audience - Harry
D) Background and Environment Visuals - Myself
E) Character Profiles and Designs - Myself
F) Soundtrack - Myself
G) Cut scenes - Sam
H) Programming - Harry
I) Props/Assets - Keiran

We had to make a treatment for our game, we all brainstormed ideas but I wrote up most of the powerpoint, and spent time changing and updating it.

November 2018

Now we had our plan for the game, we started to make designs for the playable characters. I made a design for the magpie, an AI character, in photoshop. Sam made the design for the eagle but we talked about how the design would look. From this point on, we carried on making designs, including the background, which I made, and the playable character being an eagle. Once these designs were made, we had to make different versions which I then turned into a gif, using photoshop.

December 2018

Once the majority of the designs where done, we started to code. We all looked at coding videos, to get us used to it. Kieran ended up making a lot of the scripts, but I helped him out and I worked on writing a script for the magpie moving. I also added in rock colliders and other props that caused the player to die when colliding with them. I helped write the script and then applied the script to different assets.

January 2019

We started to think about the games HUD. I made some template designs for pause buttons, volume controls, and the main menu. I made these in photoshop. I also made a nest in photoshop to add to the main menu.

February 2019

By this point, most of the game was complete, however, we had quite a few problems with coding, and working our assets into the game. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a way to apply certain scripts to GIF and PNG files, so we had to make some of the assets in unity.

April 2019

While we carried on coding the game, I went back through our paperwork and I touched up some of the assets. The assets where all made with green backgrounds, hoping we could just delete the green screen afterwards, however, we didn't notice small green lines around the assets. I then took the assets back into photoshop and took some time to carefully take out the green lines. I then looked back through our paperwork to make sure it was all there and all up to good quality.

May 2019

By this point our game is basically finished, we added in some extra colliders for the first part of the game. I had to change a couple of things, I made a level complete png and gif for when the player completes the game. I then added cloud colliders to the game.

Summary

Overall I did a big chunk of coding, and working within unity, moving objects around and testing different commands. I also helped with a lot of the designs and brainstorming character ideas. Also with the original planning for the multiple different games and all there storylines. I enjoyed coming up with these ideas, as it got me inspired to try and bring my imagination to life. I made a lot of HUD templates, like the pause menus and level complete banner in photoshop from scratch. I did a lot of the paperwork, so our plans where put down on a sheet, and so we had evidence for our work.